Where now?

The British National Party’s success in the London Assembly elections coupled with its small but continued progress across the country provides an ideal opportunity critically to assess where the campaign against the British National Party is going.

For the past few years we have successfully limited the advance of the BNP in local elections, even reversing its fortunes in some of its traditional heartlands such as Sandwell, Oldham and Bradford. Even Nick Griffin, the BNP leader, has publicly admitted that we have developed an election operation that can beat the BNP almost everywhere.

But the truth is that as each year goes by our job is getting harder. There is an ever-growing list of wards at risk to the BNP, it’s becoming more difficult to turn out our voters and even when we do prevent the BNP from winning we do so by increasing turnout rather than necessarily reducing the BNP’s support. In today’s political climate we can sometimes feel a sense of relief just by keeping the BNP down to 30% support in key wards.

It is perfectly feasible to continue this approach over the next couple of years. We will defeat the BNP in many more wards than they win and perhaps we can hold them at bay long enough for wider external factors to fundamentally undercut the BNP’s support.

Or we can perhaps try a radically different approach.

This essay will look at possible approaches. It is the opening of a discussion about where we go now. There are no simple or easy solutions of course, no one anti-fascist strategy can defeat the BNP on its own. However, as I shall try to explain, unless we do something radically different the situation will get a lot worse before it gets better.

To do that we need to really understand what is going on.

We are currently witnessing a tangible change in British politics. The old traditional voting patterns are fragmenting as voters increasingly shop around for a party that best articulates their concerns and even prejudices.

The emergence of the BNP is just one consequence of the change under way, and it is a change far more fundamental than many political commentators and politicians appear to register. It is also primarily an issue affecting the Labour Party.

Labour’s support among its traditional working-class voters has been shrinking for many years and this goes well beyond the current decline in fortunes for the Brown Government. In many core Labour heartlands the party’s support among social groups C2 and DE was at a lower level in 2005, when it won a general election, than in 1983 at the height of its electoral unpopularity during the Thatcher years. It is a point graphically made in the excellent book by Alexander Lee and Timothy Stanley, The End of Politics: Triangulation, Realignment and the Battle for the Centre Ground.

In 1997, 50% of C2 voters and 59% of DE voters supported Labour. By 2005 this had dropped to 40% and 48% respectively.

This drop has been even more pronounced in many core Labour areas. In Sheffield Central Labour polled over 60% of the vote in every election between 1983 and 2001, yet in 2005 its vote fell to 49.9%. In Burnley, Labour’s share of the vote dropped 38.5% during the same period.
“In Yorkshire and Humberside, the North and the North West the swing may have not significantly affected the return of Labour MPs to Westminster but majorities have been seriously diminished and the party’s share of the vote dramatically reduced,” say the authors of The End of Politics.

Some of these disappearing voters switched to other parties and in local elections this was often the Liberal Democrats, but far greater numbers simply stayed at home. A declining turnout and general lack of interest in mainstream political parties was the key winner.

For the Labour leadership this long-term shift has not mattered. In the current political system general elections are not won or lost in the Labour heartlands but in the swing marginals, where a few votes can turn success into defeat. It is these voters towards whom all the main parties increasingly gravitate.

Labour has relied on the fact that its traditional support, although declining, has had nowhere else to go. Many of these voters, whose communities were decimated under Thatcher, would never countenance voting Conservative. A few switched to the Liberal Democrats, others stayed at home but the bulk of those who did vote continued to support Labour.

But this is now changing. The BNP is emerging as the voice of this forgotten working class. A survey of the wards that produced the 25 best BNP votes in May shows plainly the profile of BNP supporting areas. All but one rank well below average in the Indices of Deprivation and the one exception, Queensbury in Bradford, is roughly average. Nearly all are among the top 10% most deprived areas.

In every single one of these wards, including Queensbury, the proportion of the population with no qualifications at all is well below the national average. Likewise, the proportion of people with a level 4/5 qualification (degree or teaching/social work qualification) is a fraction of the national average.

The result is that the BNP is now challenging Labour in many of its heartlands and the effect is startling. As we show elsewhere in this magazine, the BNP received more votes than Labour in the redrawn Dagenham and Rainham constituency. And it was not the only one. As table 1 illustrates, the BNP received more votes than both Labour and the Conservatives in the new Morley and Outwood constit-uency, which will be contested by Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families.

The BNP also beat Labour in one of the two new Havering constituencies and would probably have polled more votes than Labour in Stoke-on-Trent South and Central if it had put forward more candidates.

It is also important not to view the BNP in isolation. Its rising support is just the most visible element of this changing political scene. Other areas, such as South and West Yorkshire and South Wales, have seen a rise in local independent groups.

Who would have thought that Labour could have lost the heartlands of Merthyr Tydfil and Blaenau Gwent in South Wales to independents? In Stoke-on-Trent, a city where ten years ago Labour held all 60 seats, the party could only win four seats this year. In Barnsley, where the BNP polled 21%, the Barnsley Independent Group holds one third of the seats on the council.

Fundamental shift

The breaking with Labour reflects a far more fundamental shift than mid-term blues. For an increasing number of traditional Labour voters the party no longer reflects their interests. Lee and Stanley in The End of Politics blame New Labour’s triangulation policy under which it has moved into the centre ground of politics in order to win the key marginals.

This view is echoed by Labour MP Jon Cruddas. “The politics of middle England become even more dominant in the minds of our political leadership. The danger is that we ignore the reasons for the strength of the BNP, and in so doing reinforce the conditions that have created this situation.”

Many of the people now turning their back on the Labour Party have not shared the economic prosperity of recent years. Many in areas such as Stoke-on-Trent and Dagenham now find themselves in a worse economic position than a few years ago. Great swathes of these traditional Labour voters not only feel ignored but are increasingly seeing in the BNP a party that articulates their interests. This degree of alienation with the mainstream parties was clearly demonstrated in the BBC polling that accompanied its White Season.

A number of studies, such as those conducted by Vision 21 and more recently by Democratic Audit, show clearly that a reoccurring theme among BNP voters is the sense that no one listens to them any more. Labour is increasingly seen as a middle-class party that prioritises minority groups and the interests of more affluent voters over themselves.

This is an international phenomenon. In the United States the phenomenon of Middle American Nationalism has emerged over the past 30 years, which despises the corporate elites above and the “undeserving” poor below.

Across Western Europe we have seen working-class voters turn towards far-right and populist parties. In Denmark working-class voters have shifted from the Labour Party to the Danish People’s Party (DPP). In France the Front National remains dominant in many traditional working-class communities. In Norway, the Progress Party has become the country’s main opposition.

“Workers’ support for the socialist parties has fallen away,” say researchers from the Danish Valgprojektet (Election Project). “There is a class-defined demobilisation … an almost total loss of support for the worker parties among the younger part of the working class, especially among skilled workers.”

Writing in this month’s Red Pepper, the Norwegian writer Magnus Marsdal argues that class politics still exists but these far-right parties are “in effect the new Labour party”. He points to Denmark where in the 2001 elections 61% of the DPP’s support came from working-class voters, nearly three times as many worker voters as the Social Democrats.

In an interesting parallel with England, almost all of these voters were from poorer and less educated sections of society.

All this represents a fundamental shift in British politics and the real fear is that we are heading the way of so many other European countries where large segments of the working class have broken with their traditional centre-left parties and moved to the right.

The root of BNP support

The BNP is a racist party fuelled by a leadership that draws its political roots from fascism. That much is clear. However, its appeal goes far wider than the issue of race. The BNP is tapping into political alienation and economic deprivation. It is providing a voice for those who increasingly feel ignored and cast aside by Labour. The BNP is articulating their concerns, grievances and even prejudices.

Race is obviously a key factor but it is not the only issue. Race was a defining factor in the initial rise of the BNP in 2001. Riots, growing racial tensions and international terrorism conspired to build support for the BNP. But this is less so now.

A cursory look at where the BNP is gaining support shows that race is not necessarily the dominant issue that it was in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford. There are very small non-white communities in Stoke-on-Trent, Barnsley and Nuneaton and Bedworth. These are traditional working-class areas where people feel abandoned and ignored. It is into this alienation that the BNP moves. Yes, race is certainly a central key, but more because it provides a prism through which people can see and understand the world and, more importantly, an easy scapegoat to blame for their own situation.

But the BNP provides far more than a racist scapegoat. It gives some voters a sense of belonging, an articulation of their own frustration – even a new white identity.

This point was graphically illustrated in the BBC White Season, particularly the film set in a working men’s club in Wibsey, Bradford. “I wish I could be happy again,” said Graham Anderson. In an increasingly complicated and disorientated world it is easy to see how the BNP can point the finger of blame while simultaneously offering a new sense of white community.

Whatever the merits of the Season as a whole it did reflect the sense of loss, political abandonment and a search for identity and belonging of a minority of people in this country.

In an increasingly complex world, in which Britain’s place has changed, Britain itself is fragmenting and the old economic certainties provided by traditional employment are long gone. It is no coincidence that the BNP has emerged in those communities that have experienced most economic decline and change, principally in the former coalfields and car producing areas.

Why does all this matter for anti-fascists? Unless we can understand why the BNP is growing we have little chance of defeating it.

Anti-fascism has to continue to focus around elections. After all, this is how BNP support is measured and nothing helps the BNP grow more than substantial electoral victories.

However, it is clear that our message also has to develop. Yes, we still have to identify and turn out the anti-BNP vote, as we have successfully done in so many areas, but we must also have something to say to potential BNP voters.

A simple “Don’t vote nazi” is an irrelevant slogan that needs to be discarded immediately. That is not to say that we should not highlight the real politics of the BNP and its leadership but we must address people where they currently are. And in terms of that, very few people see the BNP as a nazi party.

It is also clear that a simple Hope not Hate message is insufficient. “You tell us to vote for Hope not hate but there is no hope round here,” one voter told me in Dagenham. Similar reports came in from Stoke-on-Trent and Nuneaton.

We need to replace empty slogans with substance, and that means involving ourselves in the community as never before. If the BNP support is driven by racial prejudice, often whipped up by the national media, economic deprivation and a loss of identity, then these are the three issues we need to contest.

Nationally, we must challenge and expose the racist lies and myths peddled in the media while also ending the muscular bidding war between the political parties over race and immigration. Not only is this politically damaging (Labour will never appease its opponents on immigration), it is also quite dishonest. The economic boom of recent years has been built on the influx of migrant workers, our public services would collapse without its non-white workforce and the pensions crisis would be even more severe without newcomers replacing those British people moving abroad in record numbers.

But it is locally that anti-fascists must focus their energies. Searchlight has long argued for a localised strategy to defeat the BNP and the need for this is even greater now. Each area is different and requires a slightly different solution.

Thinking nationally, acting locally

In the recent election we found that our general Hope not hate leaflets worked in some places but less well in others. The general trend was that they were more effective where the BNP was standing for the first time. In other places, such as Stoke-on-Trent and Dagenham, where support for the BNP is deeply entrenched, we need a different approach and one that addresses local issues and concerns.

Where we produced more localised leaflets, in Burnley, West Yorkshire and Sandwell, our material appears to have gone down a lot better.

Of course there is a limit to how much localised material we can physically produce during a short election campaign. Over the past few years we have tried to prioritise the most high risk areas and those where we have the best local contacts. Two ways of overcoming this are to widen the pool of people who can produce leaflets, and to produce more localised material at other times of the year outside election periods.

To achieve this we need more local groups – and building groups with an ability to intervene locally must be our key priority over the next two years. A good functioning local group is likely to achieve far more success. It needs to be community-orientated, broad-based and non-dogmatic.

It needs to be able to address local issues and concerns while having roots within the community. It needs to be able to form partnerships with other local groups to address issues and improve the area, while also gaining credibility within the community to break down barriers and promote cohesion.

Two good examples of community campaigning are Keighley and Epping. In Keighley the local TUC and Bradford anti-fascists confronted BNP lies over grooming, where others had ignored what was going on, while simultaneously assisting local community groups through good old fashioned community development work.

The Redbridge and Epping Forest Together group has adopted a slightly different approach but it too has been successful. It has sought to build a broad coalition of political parties and the non-aligned, and has involved residents’ and faith groups. While it has not done the community development work of Keighley, it has helped alter the political climate enough to defeat the BNP in two of the three seats it was defending.

Forming local Hope not hate groups would also be an excellent way of involving trade unionists, many of whom refuse to do any direct campaigning for the Labour Party any more. In addition to bringing extra people into activity it strengthens the relationship between unions and the local community.

There are other groups that need to be included from the start. Among them are faith groups, residents’ associations, community groups and the voluntary sector – people who care enough about their local community to be active while also having the respect of others.

It some places, such as Barking and Dagenham, one of the fundamental problems is the absence of any mainstream alternative to Labour, so the BNP is the sole beneficiary of the anti-Labour vote. For anti-fascists, this is a problem as it is hard to build a political coalition in an area where there is no one other than Labour to work with.

In these areas community work is even more important. In addition to the basic anti-BNP material to dispel the party’s lies and highlight the inadequacies of its councillors, we must collaborate with existing community and faith groups to help rebuild civic society and create an alternative pole of attraction to the BNP. It is often the lack of local positive institutions and community organisers that contributes to the feeling of despair and inability to change things for the better.

Empowering local communities to improve their local area in a positive fashion through working with and mobilising local people is essential. This includes developing a leadership programme that can provide basic organising skills and give confidence to local people.

Searchlight is not opposed to concerts and large city-centre activities but these cannot be the main focus. Large concerts, costing hundreds of thousands of pounds to stage, do not deliver leaflets in the key areas nor do they address the concerns and grievances of the people likely to vote BNP. They certainly have a place in mobilising and organising activists but the important work has got to be done at a more local level. It might not be glamorous and it might not be easy but it is vital.

Political solution

Of course on a wider level the BNP needs to be defeated politically. While much of this is outside the remit and capability of Searchlight we will strive to argue that the rise of the BNP is the consequence of the shift to the centre of all the mainstream parties. There can be no disguising this fact.

There will be some who argue for a solely class-based approach to anti-fascism but a refusal to work with the mainstream parties will only hand dozens of seats to the BNP and quicken its electoral advance.

The majority of people are still opposed to the racist message of the BNP and while it is important that we mobilise these voters we must also begin to address, at a local level, the grievances and insecurities that are giving rise to the BNP in the first place.

The clock is ticking and time is running out. The economic downturn, the credit crunch, the housing collapse and rising living costs are only going to increase insecurities over the next year or two. The political parties, and in particular Labour, are letting down a large section of the British population. Without radical and immediate change, Britain could experience the political earthquake that is engulfing much of Europe.

Searchlight